Sun Tides
by Anastigmat
Summary: It's been a long hot summer, and Lucy can't ignore the pull in her blood. Oneshot, TumnusxLucy.


Blood runs hot in summer, and this time Lucy can feel it in her body. It's come on her like an idea that won't quit; it is just shy of a compulsion.

Her sister, with her practical advice – because _honestly_ dear, you know they're not exactly monogamous, and I don't want to see you disappointed – is of no help at all. Neither are her brothers, though she is shyer about giving them details – there's nothing wrong with the idea, they tell her; if you think you should go, they say, then go.

It comes down to her, down to a night where the air sits hot and heavy over the land, down to an evening when the curtains hang still in open windows and her sheets twist around her restless body because the urge to move is too strong to ignore.

She dresses quietly and silently, leaving aside a crown or shoes; she wears only a simple dress, an undershift without sleeves. She binds her hair with a scrap of leather, knowing not to wear or bring anything she'll miss.

The flagstones in the courtyard are warm on her feet, though sundown was hours ago. It's been a hot summer – the hottest anyone can remember – and it affects everyone in different ways.

She wonders, briefly, how she will find the fire – or, if it will be the right one she finds – before her feet begin to move independent of her will, and she knows then the night's spell is on her.

She follows her blood through the forest, quiet as a ghost in a white scrap of a dress. It is not a long walk, but she has been walking forever; time is another thing ignoring the rules tonight. She pauses, while crossing a stream, to drink from a cupped hand, and as the water slips through her fingers and falls down her dress, it is surprisingly cool against her warm skin.

She is aware of the glow in the distance as a foggy, faint thing, and when she has reached it, she is surprised. They know who she is – there is no doubt about that – but her reception is different, wilder, ritualistic. The music never stops, and nobody bows; instead hands fall upon her, unbinding her hair, freeing her from the dress as gentle fingers paint her skin in whorls of red and black. She is given a cup of something sweet and she drinks it down greedily, ignoring the sticky mess as it runs down her chin.

A wreath of summer flowers is placed upon her head. Crowned thus, she is led into the dance.

The fire roars hotter than even the still, dead air above. She feels its heat sear her flesh and her bones, into the spaces beyond body and mind where the sun tides call to her. The only thing to do, obviously, is dance – to dance fast and wild, to keep the air moving against her overheated skin. If she stumbles, or takes a wrong step, she is kept from falling by hands touching gently and reverently against shoulder or hip.

The press of bodies moves and shifts, and suddenly she is not alone; suddenly, the chaos resolves itself into one other person.

"I didn't think you'd come," he says. He is dark and wild; he is everything she knows; he is painted with spirals and patterns that match her own. Flowers like hers rest on his brow.

"I didn't know I would," she says, self-conscious for a moment. "I had to."

He takes her hands in his own and bows to her – a motion far older than the theatrics in court; this is the way stars would greet each other; this is the way the first animals acknowledged life when they burst from the ground. "I have been waiting for you," he says softly, "for rather a long time." He offers a tiny, apologetic smile.

For the space of a single breath there is silence and she is confused. The blood urges her on again. She drops a kiss on his brow below the flowers held up by horns, smearing the sigils there with her mouth, taking him as hers. The music begins anew with a roar, darker and wilder, more crazed, keeping time with the thrum of her heartbeat. It knows how she feels – they all do, the trees, the revelers, the drummers and musicians, the very snaps and bangs of the bonfire. And him. He feels the same; she feels the beat in his hands.

The dancing now is wilder, older, and for a moment she thinks to herself that _this_ must be the deeper magic. Then she is lost to herself again, lost in the motion and the heat of the fire, lost in him as above and below and around them, the world gently nods its approval.

They fall together in a bank of moss, deliciously cool against her burning skin. "It was only you," one of them is saying, "it could only ever be you," but she does not know who speaks, or if they are both saying the same words to each other. She knows their bodies as they move together, she feels his hands and her mouth, but she is something larger. She is the land, she is the summer, she is years becoming centuries of the ebb and flow of life. She is the queen and she has given herself to the world, and in return it has granted her heart's desire.

* * *

_A quick note: _  
I can't help it. I absolutely can't. Lucy/Tumnus has been my OTP since I was six. I don't know where this came from, but it burst into my head fairly full-formed, and now I give it to you. 


End file.
